Bagheria

In Sicily, the custom of extra-urban holiday residences arrived later than in Venice (with the Venetian Villas) and Naples (with the Vesuvian villas). Only at the end of the seventeenth century, and especially in the eighteenth century, did the Sicilian nobility residing in Palermo begin to build sumptuous houses for vacationing in the area immediately outside of Palermo, in Piana dei Colli and Bagheria. The Prince of Butera was the first to launch this fashion: in 1658 Giuseppe Branciforte built a palace in Bagheria and was followed a few years later, by other Sicilian aristocrats.

<<<—previous page   back to index—>>>